


vagabonds and pathfinders

by whimsicalimages



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Norse Religion & Lore, Asgard, Father Figure Heimdall, Gen, Heimdall-centric, Screw Destiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 21:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalimages/pseuds/whimsicalimages
Summary: At this moment, a Seer on the other side of Asgard is having a vision – Loki and Heimdall, weapons drawn, running at each other on a battlefield centuries from now. Loki is anguished and Heimdall is grim, and a sickly blue light haunts the sky. This vision will become prophecy, and prophecy will be treated as fact.Heimdall himself has never had much patience for it.





	vagabonds and pathfinders

**Author's Note:**

> Three months ago, I walked out of Thor: Ragnarok and said to myself, god damn it, I'm going to write a Heimdall-the-longsuffering-and-overqualified-father-figure fic even if only three people in the whole world want to read it. It's three months late and twice as long as I anticipated, but here it is! Thanks to [M](http://productivity-is-irrelevant.tumblr.com/), [A](http://hellaarabella.tumblr.com/), and [S](http://sidewaystime.tumblr.com/) for endless cheerleading and beta-reading. Title pilfered from Czeslaw Milosz's [City Without A Name](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49752/city-without-a-name). Enjoy!

The thing about the future is – well. It’s hard to predict.

-

When Heimdall lays eyes on Loki for the first time, thousands of years stretch out into being before him, each holding a million chances to change fate. Cruelties and victories, snakes, wolves, cowardice and bravery, and always the golden apples of Idunn hanging just out of reach. Always the threads of the seiðr being made and remade.

He blinks, and all that is in front of him is a healthy-looking babe held in Odin’s arms. The child stares back at him, eyes curious and without even a trace of jötunn red.

“He will be raised beside Thor, as a younger brother,” Odin says. Because Odin has decreed it, it will be so; Heimdall knows this better than he knows anything.

“As his lesser,” Heimdall murmurs.

“As his equal,” Frigga corrects, her narrowed eyes daring Odin to object. “We adopt him and raise him as our own or we cast him back out. I’ll not have anyone growing up in shadows in our home. Not anymore.”

The wound of Hela goes unspoken, weighing down the air. They had always meant to have two children, and perhaps this is Odin’s attempt to patch the hole that grief has left in them. Laufey’s child, they think, will never have to find out his true nature. He and Thor can be the children that Odin and Frigga want them to be in this new, brighter world.

Heimdall says nothing – he respects the Lord and Lady of this realm, and his place has never been to change their minds. Even when he knows it could one day doom all of them.

“What say you, Heimdall?” Odin says, smile tight. “Will Laufey’s son be part of our ranks and fight alongside us?”

 _Will he bring glories to my kingdom?_ Odin is asking, still war-minded. The habits of conquest do not die so easily. Heimdall can hear them in his voice.

 _Will loving him be enough, or have we brought still more tragedy to our doors?_ Frigga is wondering. This doubt is written on her face; she has ever been the wisest of the Asgardian nobility.

Heimdall has no answers that are both sufficient and honest. “He is your son, now, your Majesties,” he says.

At this moment, a Seer on the other side of Asgard is having a vision – an adult Loki and Heimdall, weapons drawn, running at each other on a battlefield. Loki is anguished and Heimdall is grim, and a sickly blue light haunts the sky. This vision will become prophecy, and prophecy will be treated as fact.

Heimdall himself has never had much patience for it.

Frigga beams at the blessing, and even Odin looks satisfied. “Loki Odinson, then,” he says. “Of Asgard.”

-

“The people of Midgard democratically elect their leaders, you know,” Loki says. Heimdall isn’t sure if this is the real Loki, but he can’t be bothered to check.

There’s another fight coming for the remnants of Asgard carried on this ship, and he already knows he will spend the next few hours sharpening his sword and readying the rest of his stockpiled weapons. The fight could be tomorrow, or it could be in several months’ time. Either way, they are unlikely to last very long.

“Completely barbaric, if you ask me,” Loki continues, ignoring the methodical scrape of metal on stone. “Trusting buffoons and pretenders to somehow divine who will best serve as a leader? Who will best keep them alive? Somewhere like Asgard, perhaps, it could be done – the people know they walk among gods, so it would only make sense to choose one of them. Who else would possibly be well-respected enough?”

Heimdall looks up, squints at Loki. “Thor will be a good king,” he says. He knows, because he will be at Thor’s side to help make it happen. This is a future that has already been set into motion – the length of Thor’s reign, however, is hazy.

“You would be a better one,” Loki says.

There it is – one of Loki’s easier plays. For all his illusions, he has always been so transparent.

Heimdall looks back down at the sword, carefully runs his whetstone along its edge, and hides the faint smile he knows must be on his face. He could say, I do not want to rule, which has the benefit of being true. But that would only prolong Loki’s scheming.

“You cannot save your brother from the fight that lies ahead of us, little snake,” he says instead. “Not by removing him from his throne, nor by installing me in it.”

Loki sighs, a small huff of air in the thrumming almost-silence of the spaceship. “So there will be a fight,” he says.

Heimdall shrugs. “Perhaps there will not be,” he says, even though he can feel it coming. There is a weight in his bones which has grown heavier each time he’s opened his eyes to the other side of the galaxy and seen unending darkness. A darkness like that has no room for anything but violence, and it cannot be undone or forced back by anything but the same.

He glances up. Loki gives a meaningful look to his sword.

“I like to be prepared,” Heimdall says.

“There’s preparation, and there’s sharpening Hǫfuð until it cannot possibly be sharper.”

Heimdall nods slightly in acknowledgment. “It is likely that I will have need of it,” he says.

Loki sighs again, and leans his head back against the wall. The solid thunk of impact means that Loki is almost-certainly physically present. “I know Thor will be a good king,” he says. “Thor is already a good king. He cares about these people more than Odin ever did. Thor woke his powers for them. He destroyed his home for them.”

“You had a hand in that, as I recall,” Heimdall says. “It was your home, as well.”

“And yours, by then,” Loki says. “You saved those people first, made sure there was a refuge from Hela. You are the one to whom Asgard truly owes a life debt, probably many times over. You’ve already led them once.”

“Loki,” Heimdall says, not unkind. “If you want to engineer a safer future for Asgard, you’d do better to practice your battle magics.”

Loki grimaces. “You know I don’t care about Asgard’s safety,” he lies.

Heimdall just hums in answer.

-

“We’re fated to kill each other,” Loki says. “Did you know that?”

He’s been sitting next to Heimdall for a long hour, watching the changing colors of the gateway. He’s always been more careful than Thor, more willing to wait and see, but their tactfulness is, thus far, exactly the same: minimal at best.

“I see you’ve been reading the prophecies again,” Heimdall says.

Loki’s brow furrows. So small, for one descended from a race of giants – even among Asgardians, Loki is undersized. At all of seven years old, he’s already taken easily to shapeshifting and other magics, from what Frigga has said.

“How else am I supposed to know the future? I’m not a Seer like you,” says Loki.

Heimdall crouches down so that he is eye-to-eye with Loki. “Even I don’t know the future, and what is written in the books of the Aesir cannot encompass every possible route taken to get there. Fate is a tricky thing, little snake. What happens relies mostly on luck, not on prophecy.”

Loki is silent, face solemn, betraying none of the trickery he will become famous for. “I don’t think I want to kill you,” he says after a few moments.

“That’s heartening,” Heimdall replies dryly.

“I don’t want to become someone who wants to kill you,” Loki says, frowning now.

“Then don’t.”

“But the prophecy—”

“There are many different kinds of magic in our realms, Loki,” Heimdall says. “Prophecy is one of the most fickle. Better to ignore prophecy and build your own path than to be servant to one laid out for you by someone else.”

“Father believes in the prophecy books,” Loki says, scowling.

If Heimdall could live a thousand years without hearing Loki or Thor explain something by starting with the phrase ‘Father believes,’ it would still be too short a time.

“Yes, he does,” Heimdall says. “And what does your mother believe?”

Loki hesitates. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Perhaps you should ask.”

-

It is a massive ship indeed that finally catches up to them. Loki and Thor freeze, but Heimdall is already punching them to lightspeed. They don’t have enough fuel left for a very long jump, but their best chance for survival is to outrun the _Sanctuary II_ for as long as possible.

The lights blur around them, and Thor whirls to face him, quick to recover. “Whose ship was that? Will they track us?”

“Thanos,” Loki whispers. “The Mad Titan.”

“Yes,” Heimdall says, already looking at the maps for the nearest habitable world. He’s been preparing for this fight, but there wouldn’t be enough preparation if they’d had years. He’d thought perhaps some could stand and fight – but one look at that ship had put paid to that idea. It would be a rout. The people must be saved, first and foremost, before they can consider dealing with Thanos. They carry a nation here with them.

“He’ll follow us to the end of the universe,” Loki says, visibly shaken and trying to hide it.

Thor turns to stare at him. “Loki,” he starts.

“I need to go,” Loki says to Heimdall. “I can run on my own, but we’re too big a target right now, there’s too much risk and you know it. You know it must be so.”

“Loki,” Thor says, hand hovering over his brother’s shoulder. “Don’t do this. You know Asgard is best when it stands as one. _We’re_ at our best when we’re fighting as one.”

Loki musters up an echo of his usual smirk. “He’s not after Asgard, Thor,” he says, without even a sideways glance at his brother. He keeps his eyes on Heimdall, beseeching. “He’s after the Tesseract, and that’s what he’s tracking. If I take it and draw him away, you can run.”

As Heimdall had suspected, Thor looks completely unsurprised at the revelation that Loki has the Tesseract. “If you take it and draw him away, he’ll kill you for it,” Thor says.

Loki glances at Heimdall. “He won’t,” he says. “Prophecy says I’ll live to fight again.”

Thor rolls his eye. “Fuck prophecy,” he says, because Thor has always intrinsically understood many things that Loki took centuries to grasp. It is one of his best qualities, Heimdall thinks.

“Let him go,” Heimdall says, before Loki can open his mouth to retort.

Thor looks at him, and whatever he sees in his face must be enough, because he frowns but nods. He turns back to Loki and lets his hand fall to his side. The real Loki isn’t the one standing in this room with them, anyway.

“Good luck. Don’t die,” Thor finally says.

“I’ll do my best,” Loki replies, and disappears.

-

Loki and Thor at age fourteen are the collective nightmare of everyone in the palace, and Heimdall finds himself grateful that he keeps his watch at the gate and not any closer. Bad enough that Loki is on the cusp of learning how to hide himself from Heimdall’s vision, but hasn’t mastered it – instead, Heimdall sees the brothers in flashes at inopportune moments.

Like when Loki panics and forgets himself while on the run from a skillet-wielding head cook, Thor sprinting just ahead of him.

Heimdall sighs.

Hours later, Loki arrives with a total lack of contrition to face his fate: duty on guard at the edge of the Bifrost. The worst punishment for Loki, Odin has always maintained, is enforced boredom, and there are approximately two people in Asgard capable of enforcing it. Regrettably, Heimdall is one of them, and the Observatory isn’t large enough for avoidance tactics.

“Do you ever miss it?” Loki asks, putting down the shield he’s been halfheartedly polishing for the past half hour and abandoning any pretense of working. “Vanaheim.”

“Sometimes,” Heimdall says. “But I know I will see it again. And Vanaheim as a place was never especially important – many of its people dwell in this realm now.”

Loki hums. “My mother told me that you came here to stop a war,” he says. “But Father loves fighting. Why would he want it to end? Why would he agree to an exchange of ambassadors, of all things?”

He stops himself, but Heimdall can hear the next words as if he’d voiced them – seeking peace by mutual agreement rather than by the enemy’s defeat is surely the act of a coward, not that of Odin Allfather. Loki and Thor are on the cusp of adulthood, but both of them still fall back on Odin’s words, his actions. Their histories have not been edited so heavily as to be completely bloodless, though the conquests are made to look beneficial for all involved, and Hela’s role is erased. As ever, the past is written by the victors.

“The war between the Aesir and the Vanir lasted for years and years,” Heimdall says.

When Odin and Hela besieged the capital of Vanaheim, at first Njörðr had cautioned that they could outlast the Aesir and their taste for easy conquering, that there was no reason to fight and lose precious lives when they could simply survive. Better to be named cowards than to become a subjugated people, defeated by a superior force.

But the siege went on for years, and the supplies from the outlying regions stopped coming as the routes into the city were plugged up – even the Vanir could not last indefinitely without food. The decision was made to send out their warriors before they grew too weak to fight, and even half-starved they fought the armies of the Aesir to a standstill after eight hundred days of battle. The Valkyries did not ride out for such simple conflicts, and were not there to turn the tide in Asgard’s favor.

The Vanir, Heimdall included, had not thought they would win, but more people rose to fight when they saw their own fall. They came from the farms and the villages scattered across Vanaheim, with makeshift weapons to attack the gods who had invaded their home.

The Aesir were not _their_ gods, after all. The people of Vanaheim had owed them no fealty, and their blood spilled as red as anyone’s. It came down to the flip of a coin. To luck.

“Vanaheim was the last of the nine realms to be tied to Yggdrasil,” Loki says.

Heimdall blinks and returns to the Observatory, and the bridge, and his young charge. “Yes,” he says. “The Vanir fought the Aesir to a draw, and Odin met with Njörðr, the leader of the Vanir, to pledge a truce. Both agreed to send strong warriors as their representatives, to seal the agreement.”

Loki looks like he is having a difficult time putting “Odin” and “truce” together. Heimdall sincerely wishes for Frigga’s tempering presence.

He sits down next to Loki, who is still absentmindedly holding the shield. “Sometimes, even a warrior people must put down their swords,” he says. “There is such a thing as too much death. Your father knew that then, and he knows it now. When that point comes, there is no price too great to pay to ensure peace.”

Loki is silent for a few moments. “You came here to seal the end of a war, and now you guard all of us,” he says. “Why would you do that?”

Always asking questions. “It is what I am fated to do,” Heimdall answers. It’s close enough to the truth.

“You don’t believe in fate,” Loki points out.

Heimdall fights back a smile. “I believe in fate sometimes,” he says. “But more often, I believe in luck.”

“Aren’t they the same thing?” Loki asks, frowning.

“No, they aren’t,” Heimdall says, and elaborates no further. Loki will figure it out, eventually. Maybe.

Loki huffs, gives up, and goes back to his polishing.

-

Hela rages for days against the cage that Odin has put her in, and Odin still sees only his daughter and his failure. He cannot look past that, cannot banish her to Niflheim despite the poison-green fires that are still burning in parts of Asgard. It is shaking his people’s faith in him.

“I loved my daughter,” Frigga tells Heimdall.

They walk in the palace gardens, where everything has rotted in Hela’s wake. It will take a full century before new life grows here on its own, Heimdall knows, but Frigga stops to run a hand along every leaf and every withered flower. The seiðr flows golden around her palm, and the buds open again. The leaves turn a brilliant autumn red, and the corners of Frigga’s mouth turn ever-so-slightly upwards.

“I know,” Heimdall says.

“She was my firstborn,” Frigga says. “Odin will not cast her out.”

“You seek my aid,” Heimdall says. He has been here for many years as the envoy of the Vanir, and this is the first time he has been called to a fight, but it is not especially surprising. The Valkyries were decimated by Hela’s last stand, and there are few left among the ranks of the Aesir with the mastery of seiðr to seal her. Fewer still who would be willing to go so far against their once-commander.

“Yes,” Frigga says. “I seek your aid.”

She has only kindness in her eyes, and so Heimdall nods.

“We will go tonight,” he says.

-

“A long time ago, you told me to ask my mother what she thought of prophetic magic,” Loki says.

“I did,” Heimdall agrees, nursing his mead. Whoever they had stolen this ship from had excellent taste in alcohol.

“Do you know what she told me?” Loki asks.

Thor and Valkyrie whirl around each other in the small space cleared in the center of the hold, their practice-fighting as close to a dance as the two of them will ever manage with grace. All that remains of Asgard is entranced, cheering whenever one of them comes deliberately close to landing a hit.

But Loki isn’t looking there, though some of his focus is, as always, reserved for his brother alone. Loki is looking at Heimdall.

“She told me that to ignore a prophecy is folly,” he says.

Heimdall turns to meet his eyes, raising an eyebrow. “No, she didn’t,” he says.

“No, she didn’t,” Loki allows. “She told me that prophetic magic was exactly as strong as I believed it to be. At the time, I thought that meant it was infallible, that it foretold a destiny that was certain. But now, I realize she didn’t mean that at all. She meant something entirely different, and I couldn’t see it for the longest time. She meant that–”

“It’s like any other magic,” Heimdall murmurs.  

“Once you stop believing in it, it loses its power,” Loki says, and then goes silent.

Thor and Valkyrie finish at a draw, and Valkyrie beckons the next challenger up. She’s been training the few soldiers that remain, for the fight she can feel coming. She and Heimdall are the oldest beings on this ship, and they both see it, just over the horizon. Waiting for blood.

Thor is immediately besieged by his people, asking about the length of the journey, the state of provisions, the nature of the alien Midgardians. No matter how many times he answers the same questions, people always want to hear his words for themselves, and he indulges them. He has become a good and patient teacher, over these last few weeks. Heimdall is glad of it. He has always thought that teachers make better leaders than warriors do.

“I took it from the vault, you know,” Loki says. “The Tesseract.”

Heimdall shrugs. “I had assumed as much.”

Loki squints at him. “You seem unbothered,” he says. “Let me clarify: I, a criminal who froze you in ice and betrayed Asgard several times, impersonated Odin Allfather for two years, and cast you out falsely for a traitor, am keeping an object of infinite power in my chambers, in secret and to untold ends.”

“I had assumed as much,” Heimdall repeats.

“Why are you so unconcerned?” Loki asks. “I’m truly sorry, by the way, for freezing you in ice. Not one of my wiser ideas, in hindsight.”

“The universe is full of threats much larger than you, little snake,” Heimdall says. “What’s left of Asgard is on this ship, and if the Tesseract wards off any would-be attackers, so be it.” He feels the smirk that wants to break free and stifles it. “And I accept your apology, though I admit I never thought I’d hear it.”

Loki looks away, and then sets his jaw. “You’re so sure I would use the Tesseract in our defense.”

“No,” Heimdall says. “The Sight says you will use it against us and give it up to Thanos, who you’ve already had dealings with. The Sight says you and I will face each other on the battlefield.”

“You haven’t told Thor,” Loki says. It isn’t a question.

“Should I?”

“You swore an oath to protect Asgard.”

“So I did,” Heimdall says. “And so I am. The Sight isn’t everything.”

“Prophecy is like any other magic,” Loki mutters.

“Once you stop believing in it, it loses its power,” Heimdall says.

-

Before he is to leave Vanaheim, Njörðr comes to anoint him.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says. “We can find another.”

“I volunteered,” Heimdall says.

The ghost of a smile passes across Njörðr’s face. “Yes, but I wanted to make the offer,” he says.

“I know.”

“Then for bravery, and skill, and luck,” Njörðr says, thumb drawing runes across Heimdall’s forehead and cheekbones.

“You think I, of all of us, will have need of much luck among the Aesir?” Heimdall asks.

“Certainly more luck than you need here, my friend,” Njörðr replies, eyes twinkling a dim gold in the half-light. The same color as Heimdall’s. “Seeing as it is, in fact, your domain. We will not see each other for many ages, I am afraid. Perhaps not until the era of Asgard has ended and Ragnarok has borne us all into our graves.”

“Well, then. For luck,” Heimdall says, and clasps his hand.

“What use has a group of Seers for luck?” a new voice asks. Hela melts out from the shadows, come to collect Asgard’s insurance that the Vanir won’t reignite their war. Heimdall has only ever seen her on the battlefield, astride her wolf, and she looks strange and out of place here in their peaceful capital.

Vanaheim’s peaceful capital. No longer his.

“Anyone has use enough for luck, Hela Odinsdottir,” says Njörðr, and steps back.

“I suppose,” Hela mutters. “Come, if you are still willing. We have already delivered Hœnir to your fellows and upheld our end of the bargain, so if you’d like to restart the fighting, now’s your chance to end this farcical attempt at peace.”

Heimdall suppresses a snort. Hela sounds almost hopeful; he suspects Odin may not have a plan to rein in his bloodthirsty daughter. “I am still willing,” he says.

“More’s the pity,” Hela says, and they go.

-

It’s ship’s night, but Loki is sitting at the bridge and watching the stars instead of sleeping.

When he’d initially taken Odin’s guise, Heimdall had come very close to taking him by the shoulders and shaking him. Closer than he’d ever been, pushed by the darkness he saw at the end of the path Loki had put them on.

Centuries of living, and the fact that actions have consequences still wasn’t something Loki had fully internalized.

Loki’s fingers are restless, one hand tapping out a rhythm on his knee and the other fiddling with a coin.

Heimdall sits by him. Loki acknowledges his presence with a distracted nod, and Heimdall lets him continue wandering in his own thoughts for a few minutes.

“You think I am wasting my time when I should be preparing,” Loki says eventually.

“Time spent in contemplation is not always time wasted. But Thanos will come, Loki,” Heimdall says. “You know this. You cannot avoid it.”

“I know,” Loki says, flipping the coin over his fingers.

“You know that he cannot be allowed to take the Tesseract,” Heimdall says.

“I know,” Loki repeats, and sighs. “But I don’t know how to stop him. I’m not strong enough, and he has two of the gems. The battlefield is already hideously uneven.”

Heimdall looks at him levelly. “You’re the god of mischief,” he says. “And you worry about an uneven battlefield?”

“I worry that I’m not – enough,” Loki says, looking baffled by his own honesty. “Not for this. Not for what this fight will require. I cannot win a contest of strength with Thanos, and neither can Thor, nor anyone else in this miserable galaxy. Not even you.” He looks down at his hands, stilling his fingers from their fidgeting. “I don’t see a way out.”

“Loki,” Heimdall says. “You’re the god of mischief.”

Loki meets his eyes, and tilts his head. Heimdall just watches him, steady.

“You know,” Loki says at last. “My mother once told me that there is always a way forward, but some ways simply require more luck than others.” He pauses. “I had forgotten, somehow, what you are the god of.”

Heimdall smiles with all his teeth.

-

Loki stands next to Thanos when they make their landing, the final assault starting in an innocuous Midgardian field.

Perhaps not so innocuous – there is an enormous imprint in the middle. The Bifrost had opened a path here, once. There is still magic in the ground, waiting only for the right person to wake it.

Thor lets out a punched-out noise at the sight of his brother and his enemy, and Heimdall puts a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps a little faith is warranted,” he says.

“Loki has betrayed me at every turn for the past decade,” Thor points out.

“My sister betrayed me over and over, our entire lives,” volunteers the green woman who Thor had found fighting in the wreckage of Chicago. Gamora, Heimdall thinks. “And then, in the end, she didn’t. She hated Thanos more than she ever hated me.”

“I don’t think that will happen here,” Thor mutters.

“Where is it?” Thanos calls, voice booming across the open ground. “Where is the Tesseract?”

“The Asgardians have it,” Loki says, before carefully adding, “my Lord.”

There is a beat of silence at his words, carried on the wind. The Midgardian sky is cloudy, threatening rain. Maybe thunder.

Heimdall steps forward. “I have it,” he says. “And I will fight to keep it.”

Thor stares at him.

Thanos bares his teeth, an ugly expression. “The little god wants to fight me?” he asks, and laughs. “I have my own little god. Come, Loki, prove yourself to me. This is your last chance to do so.”

Loki moves forward, drawing his daggers, and Heimdall can see fear warring with determination on his face, and the faintest golden threads around his fingers.

“Heimdall,” Thor begins, wary.

Heimdall smiles at him. “Thor,” he says. “This is not your fight.”

“He is my brother,” Thor says.

“This is not your fight,” Heimdall says again, and pushes Thor back with his seiðr to where the others are standing. “It’s mine. I’m sorry.”

He draws Hǫfuð, and walks. He thinks one of the other Midgardians says something about taking the opportunity to attack Thanos, but he pays it no mind. Nobody is going to stop him.

To overcome the Mad Titan, they will all need a great deal of the one thing which only Heimdall can provide.

Loki looks at him from across the battlefield, and tilts his head the barest amount, and then they’re both running, Heimdall hefting his sword. Loki throws one of his daggers as he sprints and Heimdall bats it easily aside, and they’re almost to the center, passing the edges of the Bifrost’s mark, and Loki is reaching into a pocket of space that wasn’t there a moment ago, a pocket of space in the very middle of the whorls on the ground, and pulling out the Tesseract.

Thanos screams, beginning to move to them, but Loki pins the cube to the ground with his own magic and Heimdall, momentum still hurtling him and Hǫfuð forward, strikes once and strikes true and shatters the casing of the Tesseract, and then he is being thrown back by a wave of power and all is blinding, shimmering blue light.

-

In the end, Odin doesn’t know until after the deed is done. For all his wisdom, he is exceptionally good at overlooking things he does not want to see.

“Mother, dearest,” Hela calls, laughing too-high and too-loud at their arrival. “And Heimdall. Of course it would be you, you’ve never been loyal to Asgard, anyway.”

“Hela,” he says. She doesn’t deserve mercy, but she deserves to have her name spoken. Anyone does.

“Too much of your cursed Vanir foresight, too many _prophecies,_ ” she spits. “Did you see this? Did you see that I would be betrayed by my own parents, by the warriors sworn to follow me, by all Asgard? By that which I made great? I helped build this golden realm, and you would cast me from it!” She turns, paces once, twice, three times around her confinement, a wolf with nowhere to go. 

Frigga reaches through the shield and touches her daughter’s cheek, and Hela freezes. Heimdall averts his eyes. They are still family.

“I am sorry I was not a better mother to you,” Frigga says. “I wish I had taken you from here and raised you to be a god and not a weapon.”

Hela snarls and jerks away. Out of the corner of his eye, Heimdall sees Frigga withdraw her hand. “I am glad that Father made me into a weapon. It was my fate,” Hela says. “He made me strong, where you would have had me weaving seiðr and helping people grow crops.”

Frigga looks immeasurably sad. “I failed in this, too,” she says. “There is more than one kind of strength, my daughter, and more than one fate. I am only sorry you cannot see that.”

Heimdall steps up next to her. Frigga closes her eyes, blocking out Hela’s sullen silence, and visibly gathers herself.

“The shield will be weakest when it is moved,” Heimdall says.

“Yes,” Frigga says. She turns and smiles at him weakly. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you for quite a long commitment to guarding this place.”

“Frigga,” Heimdall says. He has never used her true name before. “I already knew that, and I already agreed.”

It will take all their combined strength to push Hela’s prison through the Bifrost gate and then seal her there. Her barrier will dissolve soon, and she will be able to roam Niflheim to her heart’s content, but no other realm. This is what Frigga has decreed. It is a more lenient punishment than some would feel is deserved, but Heimdall is tired of watching Asgard turn itself inside out. He is tired of the endless wars of his adopted world. If this guarantees peace, so be it.

Frigga nods. She takes a breath, stretches her arms out, and casts out with her seiðr, winding around and around the walls of Hela’s cage. Heimdall can feel it settling, heavy as a cloak and weighing down the air around them.

Hela’s mouth is moving, but he can only hear the quiet buzz of the magic, her words lost to the walls they have built.

Heimdall adds his own strength, and together he and Frigga press Hela through the gate. The Bifrost is glowing, and the seiðr is golden all around them, and Hela is beating her fists against the barriers now but Frigga keeps pushing and so Heimdall does too.

Finally, Hela goes still. Frigga has stopped for a moment, hesitating here at the end, but they are too close to finishing this. If the shield were to break, it would break now – it would only take one unlucky moment. One coinflip. But Heimdall won’t allow it. He gives one final shove, and Hela disappears, and the magic around them dissipates into the gate, strengthening the layers between Asgard and Niflheim.

“It is done,” Heimdall says.

“So it is,” Frigga says. She meets his eyes, and straightens her posture into that of royalty. “Thank you.”

Heimdall inclines his head. “It is why I was meant to be here,” he says.

Frigga smiles, more honest this time. “It is why you chose to be here.”

“That is also the truth.”

-

Heimdall opens his eyes to see Thanos already recovered, holding Loki by the neck with one hand. Loki is limp but breathing. The rest of the field is littered with people groaning. Nobody else seems to have managed to overcome the shockwave yet.

The gem that had been inside the Tesseract gleams blue and unassuming where it landed on the ground next to Hǫfuð.

“You’re so small, like those other false gods,” Thanos says, grip firm on Loki’s chin as he moves Loki’s head back and forth. “You promised me this, Loki of Asgard-that-was, and now you would deny me? Try to destroy that which is my rightful prize? You know that I _will_ have that gem.”

“It was an accident,” Loki manages. “I know it is yours by right.”

“It was an accident,” Thanos mimics, voice high, and shakes his head. “You lied to me, Loki. I would have given you a whole world of your own, but you’ve gone and disappointed me again.” He leans in, voice too low for anyone but Heimdall to hear. “And you know how I feel about liars.”

Heimdall moves carefully, cloaking himself gently in his seiðr, building it up so he can disappear into it. Not even he can touch the gem itself, but there are always ways around such prohibitions.

The flaw in the infinity gems is the flaw in the universe and in every being he’s ever met – there will always be someone who thinks their path is set in stone, irreversible. Always, someone will believe in their own divine right to ultimate power. The gems themselves, half-conscious and ancient as they are, have an air of fate woven around them, as if they merely wait for someone clever enough to use them.

But Heimdall knows: none of that is true. The most powerful force in the universe – the one which governs all paths, all strings of the seiðr, and all lives of mortals and immortals alike, is simple enough. It is not destiny, nor power, nor skill.

It is luck.

“I would never lie to you intentionally,” Loki says, voice thready. “You know I fear you too much. It was an accident, truly.”

Heimdall weaves the seiðr around the Space Stone, and sets it carefully into Hǫfuð’s base, and then begins to walk, footsteps silent on the grass.

“I don’t believe you,” Thanos says. “But it’s going to give me great pleasure to watch my children wring your scrawny neck.” He throws Loki to the ground like a rag, and spits on him for good measure. “You’re not even deserving of a quick death. That would be too pleasant a fate for a worm like you.”

Heimdall keeps moving, forward, and forward, and forward.

Loki coughs, rubbing his neck, and pushes himself up slowly, until he can look up and meet Thanos’ eyes. “Thanos,” he rasps. “There’s no such thing as fate. There’s only luck.” He coughs again and glares, bloodied but defiant. “And I think you’re about to be very unlucky.”

Thanos, outraged, raises an arm to backhand Loki, and Heimdall drops his concealing seiðr and runs Hǫfuð directly through the Titan’s back, through armor and skin and gristle, straight through his heart. The Space Stone pulses with power just once, and Thanos cries out in anguish as Heimdall twists the sword in his chest, and then Thanos is enveloped in harsh, burning blue light, and then he is gone.

Heimdall looks at the sword in his hand, still bloody, and looks at Loki, who’s got an elated, over-honest smile spreading on his face and is starting to laugh and laugh until it turns into a hacking cough. Thor and some of his Midgardian friends are recovered enough that they begin to rush over, Thor skidding to a halt and dropping to press his forehead to Loki’s, murmuring quiet words as Loki allows the small comfort, and they still need to deal with the aimless forces of mercenaries that Thanos left behind, but now, for just this moment, never for long enough, they have it. They have peace.

They have gotten exceedingly lucky, today. Supernaturally lucky, even.

Valkyrie, standing apart from the fray, turns to him, eyebrows arched. “You know, nobody ever told me what you were the god of,” she says.

Heimdall sheathes Hǫfuð on his back, and grins.

**Author's Note:**

> In "real" Norse mythology, none of this goes down this way, and presumably in Infinity War none of this will go down this way, but if you'd like to yell at (or with) me for this or other reasons, I'm on tumblr [here.](http://keensers.tumblr.com/)


End file.
